The Ruin.

Miscellaneous Poems by the Reverend Luke Booker, Minister of St. Edmund's, Dudley, Worcestershire.

Thirteen quatrains, after Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. Luke Booker imagines the remains of ancient fortress becoming its own monument: "Departed Grandeur! — cou'd these stones assume | Historic pow'r to tell thy pristine fame, | The torch of Truth shou'd thy dark reign illume, | And bright Description kindle from the flame" p. 47. Since the stones remain stubbornly silent, the poet is compelled to point the moral. This poem is part of a busy sequence of ruin poems developed out of Thomas Gray's original, frequently illustrated by engravings of the gothic cast found here.

Booker appends a notable passage on ruins from Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) concluding "That man is little to be envied, whose Patriotism would not gain force upon the Plain of Marathon, or whose Piety would not grow warmer among the Ruins of Iona" 46n.

TIME — AN AUTUMNAL EVENING.
Sunk is the Sun, and cool the passing gale,
Wither'd each charm which Nature gave to Spring;
The russet spoil lies scatter'd o'er the dale
Where Silence sits to hear the Red-breast sing.